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Many years ago, I obtained a nice-looking Mauser sporter in 8mm-06 caliber, along with a set of reloading dies.

The rifle looked nice and was accurate enough...

Not knowing any better, I took the original owner's advice and obtained fresh new cases by simply shooting 30-06 commercial rounds from the 8mm-06 chamber. The brass would fire-form, and thereafter I could reload it with my 8mm-06 reloading dies. - It seemed to me at the time that the process worked quite well, but now I'm wondering if I was really wrong to do that.

I never hear of anybody else doing anything like that.

How wrong was I?

I have heard of some fire forming that way but most shoot a very reduced load when dong it. I think on these 2 calibers they are very close in dimensions. I don't have my books in front of me at this time. Of course the biggest area of concern is the neck area.

The cases came out OK, but as you can imagine, accuracy was not worth measuring. - I would shoot the rounds into berm on the ranch I was living on at the time.

Loaded with 8mm bullets, the rifle was pretty decent. I didn't have many opportunities to hunt at that time except for coyotes. In theory, it should have been an exceptional round for deer. It destroyed coyotes quite efficiently.

All of the metalwork on the gun had a high polish and a nice blue finish, but I got the impression that it used a re-chambered military barrel that somebody had worked over. It had a 'California' style stock much like the upper-end Weatherbys. - Another gun that I probably should have hung onto, but I traded it away for something different.

If I had the same gun today, I would use an expander to make 35 caliber necks, then use the 8mm-06 dies to get them back down to 8mm, then fire-form with a medium load. It was probably just dumb luck that I never experienced headspace problems doing it as I did, back then.